Gump

“The Gump” was Norman Wisdom’s own name for his idiot character, who is perhaps not quite fully established or embodied in his first star feature, TROUBLE IN STORE.

Wisdom’s once-upon-a-time appeal to kids is easy enough to understand. The typical Wisdom routine is Norman fucking up in front of an increasingly irate authority figure, which is a neat summary of the entire condition of childhood. And of course the one doing things wrong becomes the sympathetic one. To err is humorous.

Not content with that, of course, Wisdom pours on sentiment, which is unfortunate. As with Jerry Lewis (whose WHO’S MINDING THE STORE? is a ten-years-later improvement on this film), sometimes wringing some pathos out of the character involves stepping out of character altogether, seen most clearly when Norman sings “Don’t Laugh at Me ‘Cos I’m a Fool” in a voice which feels dubbed even though it isn’t.

About the only classically constructed gag of surprise in TROUBLE IN STORE.

What’s surprising, as this begins, is how stroppy Norman is. A regular little Jimmy Porter. There is, it turns out, a lot of class resentment at work in the Gump. He works in the storeroom at a large department store but dreams of being a window dresser. When he mistakenly thinks he’s got the promotion, he swans around the shop floor talking in grotesque toffee-nosed accents and using big words he doesn’t understand. The working-class kid is just waiting to move up.

Wisdom is agile — he can do spectacular falls, not on a Buster Keaton level, but there’s some impressive acrobatics here. Not really many interesting or surprising or sustained gag sequences, though. The best bit may be Norman setting himself on fire during his employer’s speech, and being too embarrassed to interrupt it. That’s some good Britishness. It reminds me of the very funny Manuel on fire bit from Fawlty Towers. Set a small man ablaze and everybody laughs.

Interesting people are involved — not director John Paddy Carstairs, who did a great many of these and not much else of distinction in a career starting in the thirties. THE SAINT IN LONDON looks to have been his one brush with the big time. He was the brother of producer Anthony Nelson Keyes, and he also directed SPARE A COPPER with George Formby, so he had form. Formby form. If you can direct one awful British comedian, you can direct ’em all.

Co-writer Ted Willis also had a hand in BITTER VICTORY, which takes some swallowing. But he was a man of many parts — British proto-kitchen sink realism like FLAME IN THE STREETS and WOMAN IN A DRESSING GOWN were at least as much his style as this muck. He devised THE BLUE LAMP and created its cop show spin-off, Dixon of Dock Green which started in 1955 and lasted until 1976 — I remember the damned thing.

A subplot, of sorts, has Margaret Rutherford, a more established star than Norman, as a shameless shoplifter. She doesn’t need material to be entertaining, she just inhabits a perpetual zone of entertainment which follows her about, emanating from her body. Also good value is Joan Sim, Carry On film goddess and a comedienne who never really got her due. Well, you don’t if you’re in a dozen carry Ons.

Megs Jenkins is on hand to answer any trivia questions about what connects Norman Wisdom to BLACK NARCISSUS.

There are some grace notes. Not many, but some, and they’re quite odd. When Norman sings his tearjerking song, he’s still sodden from wading into the duck pond in order to grab a duckling for his romantic interest to feed. A birdlike listener is so entranced she goes on filling her cup with sugar lumps. Norman’s physical wetness in this scene chimes well with his obvious mental and spiritual wetness.

Later, Norman gets into a row with a camp window dresser and they start smashing crockery, to the amusement of a crowd. Norman produces a small hammer to destroy a tea pot, but then his eye is caught by some rando in the crowd, who shakes his head confidentially. Norman puts down the small hammer and picks up a big hammer. The rando now nods, confidentially. And never appears again. I like this because it’s eccentric. Everything else in the film goes the direct route: things are smashed, people fall down, there is embarrassment, there is gurning. But here, in this strange exchange between strangers, one a sheer interloper in the film, something closer to British eccentric comedy in the Lewis Carroll tradition — or Dan Leno, maybe — peers its head round the corner, frowns slightly, and then disappears forever.

It seems that Awful British Comedians have a way of growing on one — Will Hay and George Formby both seemed less offensive on the second go-round, so I popped in another Wisdom, THE SQUARE PEG, lured by the prospect of Norman in a duel role — a typical Norman gump and a fiendish Nazi general. But any resemblance to THE GREAT DICTATOR, or even WHICH WAY TO THE FRONT? is purely uninspired. (Actually, I wonder if Jer saw this and decided, wrongly, that he could do better.)

Most of the Awful British Comedians did WWII pics — Old Mother Riley battled Nazi spies in OLD MOTHER RILEY JOINS UP, Will Hay teaches the Hitler Youth a thing or two in THE GOOSE STEPS OUT, George Formby literally punches Hitler in LET GEORGE DO IT. So it was natural for Norman to have a go, even if the war had been over for years.

Again, Norman is surprisingly stroppy — instead of setting him up as sympathetic, the movie takes pains to show its hero as an officious, petty council worker who regards his own roadwork as more central to the war effort than that of enlisted men. The movie introduces Edward Chapman as Mr. Grimsdale, his employer. Chapman had already played Norman’s boss in JUST MY LUCK, but that was Mr. Stoneway, who never appeared again. Mr. Grimsdale would recur several more times, even though Norman himself has a different surname each time. Maybe one reason Mr. G. gets increasingly grumpy (they’re kind of pals, here) is that he keeps running into idiots called Norman, all with the same face. The reason for his reappearance goes beyond a sympathy between the two actors — for some reason, Norman Wisdom yelling “Mr. Grimsdale!” in a helpless, panicky manner was judged to be hysterical. Like how Jerry Lewis was always shouting “Lady!” only he never did.

This one also has Honor Blackman — too interesting and sexy for this context — and lots of other favourites like Andre Mauranne from the PINK PANTHERS (Herbert Lom’s pained assistant) and the mighty Hattie Jacques. Oliver Reed is apparently in there somewhere also, but the anticipation of a Reed-Wisdom face-off (delicious? horrifying?) remains unfulfilled.

Nazi Norman is quite a good bit of play-acting — one always suspected he had an inner sadist. In another weird moment, non-Nazi Norman has to pretend to be French, but doesn’t speak the language so he acts the part of a non-verbal idiot. A little idiot playing a bigger idiot. Russian dolls of imbecility.

Some peculiar Nazi loveplay as Nazi Norman pours champagne over Nazi opera diva Hattie’s ample bosom. “Cor,” says non-Nazi Norman, peeping through a keyhole.

It isn’t any good, you understand. Occasionally Norman, by going too far (like Jer) can raise a laugh with dismal material or no material, but we all pay a terrible price for it. My favourite bit was when he runs out of air after being repeatedly told to exhale by a doctor. As an asthmatic, I enjoyed the ghastliness of a man deflating himself through the medium of acting.

Matthew Sweet’s section on Wisdom in Shepperton Babylon is very enlightening — and just short of nasty. He notes the way Wisdom’s home (on the Isle of Man, a tax haven) was a kind of shrine to his career. We get the Chaplinesque upbringing of horrible poverty and neglect, which does seem to explain the needy screen persona. And real life persona. And Sweet nails the way maturity tends to erode one’s ability to sympathise with the Gump.

There’s also this documentary, made subsequent to Sweet’s visit, when Norman was suffering from Altzheimer’s. Except, in a Norma Desmond version of ironic mercy, he wasn’t really suffering. His illness reduced him to the character he’d played so often, a big kid. You don’t want to get Altzheimer’s, but if you get it, this is the form you want to get it in. It’s tragic, but not for you. Norman’s biggest worry is being forced to take a bath. His second childhood was, thanks to his wealth and his loving children, a lot happier than his first.

Norman, to camera: “Thanks ever so much for looking at me.”

Throughline

Carol Reed advised that one should avoid shooting master shots with kids and adults together. The adults get thrown off by their anxiety that the kids will forget their lines. “In fact,” he added, “children never forget their lines. But they do forget their cues.”

In order to remember their cues, kids memorize entire scenes, not just their own lines and cues, and so you can see little Emma Watson’s lips moving as the other characters speak in the final train station scene of HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE. She’s psychically looping the late Robbie Coltraine’s dialogue.

And so too with little Michael Chaplin in A KING IN NEW YORK — I missed this, but once you see it you can’t unsee it. Actor Steven McNicoll, a fan of the film, tested me this valuable information. He queries why Chaplin, rarely reluctant to cut to himself, didn’t go to a single whenever his son started lip-synching. I assume either he didn’t notice or didn’t think anyone else would.

It makes a joke out of Chaplin’s advice to older son Sydney to not just stand around waiting for his line, but to pay close attention to the other players. Practice what you preach, Charlie!

Stevie added a suggestion that I check out Remembering Charlie by Jerry Epstein, Chaplin’s producer. It’s a treasure trove. And now I understand Bertrand Tavernier’s enthusiasm for my budget top sheet, which included Epstein’s name — he immediately clocked him as having been involved in some of Eddie Constantine’s French comedy-thrillers.

The book gives us the memorable image of Constantine singing Ol’ Man River to an appreciative Chaplin.

Epstein directed this Constantine movie, without credit, and apparently used some gags suggested by Chaplin. Now I want to see it to find out if they’re recognizably Chaplinesque.

We also learn that the character of Ann Kay was written for Kay Kendall, who was dating young Sydney for a time, but then Chaplin saw GENEVIEVE and didn’t care for it, and also realised he needed an American girl. Kay Kendall would have gotten laughs, which the film needs, but he was right — the only thing maintaining a sense that we’re in New York is the intermittent American and pseudo-American accents.

And it turns out that the very funny/grotesque plastic surgery sequence in KING was inspired by Epstein’s attempted nose-job. Constantine, convinced that Epstein would make a great co-star if only he’d have his schnozz fixed, had persuaded the non-actor to sign up for racial reassignment rhinoplasty, but he’d thankfully chickened out at the last moment. Chaplin saw the comic potential and ran with it.

The book informs us that Sam Wanamaker was originally cast in the Sid James part, but Chaplin felt he wasn’t aggressive enough and replaced him. But nobody told Sam, who turned up to the premiere with his family… He’d been very excited to work with CC, especially in a film denouncing the blacklist. Still, he DID get to work with CC, nobody can take that away from him.

Epstein gives us valuable insights into Chaplin’s writing process, though he tends to praise the film for things that arguably don’t deserve praise. Chaplin began with a few scenes, added more disconnected bits, searched for a unifying theme, and then finally hit on the idea of bringing back Michael’s blacklist orphan (Rosenberg son?), who runs away from the orphanage into some freezing back projection before turning up, rather inexplicably, at King Shadhov’s hotel.

The trouble with this idea is that it can’t unify all Chaplin’s ideas — Michael doesn’t even appear until halfway, then disappears for a great stretch with no clue he’s to return. The disparate scenes remain fragmented, the movie’s momentum collapsing in a series of fits, starts, and non-starters. Chaplin could write MODERN TIMES as a bag of bits, since the unifying theme was inherently present in the background of every instant of the movie — How do you survive in the modern world? THE GREAT DICTATOR and MONSIEUR VERDOUX both have serious dramatic business boiling away at all times, in which the protagonists are inextricably tangled. LIMELIGHT is less assured, because it chooses multiple problems in place of one good big one — Suicide! Hysterical Paaralyssi! Alcoholism! Creative Crisis! May-September Romance! A Woman in Love with Two Men!

Epstein wonders why people insist on seeing KING as anti-American. Nobody seems to have consciously intended this. But the movie attained this tract status by increments, so nobody noticed. Chaplin has some fun poking at American culture, innocently enough. Then he grafts on the blacklist. Now all the light satire comes to seem heavier, part of an overall attack. Still, the film is to be praised for directly attacking HUAC when everyone else was afraid to, and if it IS a critique of America it comes from a warm place — Chaplin wants America to live up to its best ideals, which is surely the opposite of being anti-American or indeed unamerican.

As in A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG, a character is dressed in the lead character’s outsized pajamas, turning them briefly into a Little Tramp figure (in COUNTESS it’s Loren in Brando’s yellow jimjams).

One successful aspect of Chaplin weaving his son through the storyline is he serves as punchline of sorts to King Shadhov’s attempt to pitch his unspecified atomic power plan to the Atomic Energy Commission — they turn up when Shadhov is out, get an earful of Michael’s communistic political speech, and run fleeing into the process shots of streets.

This leads — eventually — to Shadhov being subpoenaed, so now we’re into the film’s final stretch —

TO BE CONCLUDED

The King and Eyetuck

Things get dicey now in A KING IN NEW YORK. As Shadhov considers selling out, Chaplin gives himself a closeup in which his gaze almost meets ours. A timid version of the easy rapport with the audience he once enjoyed.

Dawn Addam’s character is not only an advertising actor and agent but also it seems a photographer. Not exactly plausible, but she does look very nice in skin-tight trousers.

Chaplin has never taken much advantage of the screen’s moments of licentiousness: he was never a pre-code filmmaker per se, avoiding sex in his late twenties and early thirties work. Now he shows signs of wanting to get into it — Addams’ character is introduced nude and inviting a peepshow scenario. But, as the screen loosens up, Chaplin will more or less retire, so we have only this dodgy scene to judge his prospects as an erotic filmmaker.

Overcome by the intimacy of Addams applying her light meter, King Shadhove pounces —

The nonconsensual clinch is interrupted. Addams’ character then has to decide whether she wants the interruptor to stay or leave. Her indecision is both telling and disturbing — it’s clear that, whatever her attitude to King S, she wasn’t ready for his all-out assault and doesn’t quite know what to think of it. And Chaplin, behind the camera, wants us to see this: in other words, he wants the scene to feel momentarily rape-adjacent.

Addams then decides to send her rescuer away, meaning she’s willing to have Shadhov jump on her again, so that’s all right, but it’s an icky moment, and I don’t really enjoy seeing CC at this age getting frisky. So it’s a relief that we dissolve to an unspecified time later, when she is repairing his makeup. Hmm, this seems a non-so-subtle clue that some strenuous activity has intervened…

Then we get the filming of a whisky commercial, a very long build-up to an inevitable gag about the stuff’s undrinkableness, allowing Chaplin to trot out all his hot mustard expressions from THE GREAT DICTATOR. It’s fine.

Another photo shoot leads to a discussion about King Shadhov’s aging fizzog, which leads to the film’s weirdest and most unsettling attempt at humour, which I have to admire somewhat for its sheer grotesquely. Shadhove decides to roll back the years with some age-corrective surgery. The results are… well.

It’s a remarkable job: since no actual surgery was performed, we have to assume this is some form of “Croydon facelift,” with the skin taped up under a toupee, or clamped together at the back or something. The Chaplin nose acquires a very League of Gentlemen “local” quality. Chaney’s PHANTOM OF THE OPERA is evoked.

It’s all a bit upsetting and it goes on for quite a while as we wait for the features to snap back into proper alignment, like Tom reconstituting himself after a flattening blow from Jerry. It eventually happens. It might be the film’s best comic idea, though it doesn’t exactly make me laugh. It’s bold, at least.

In another bit of weirdness, Shadhov attends a swank nite club where the floorshow is a slapstick wallpapering routing. As usual with CC, attempts at portraying the high life are strangely off — at least there are no plates of spaghetti this time. And, since olf stagers from Keystone are not to be had in the UK, the comedians aren’t particularly amusing, but I guess this is better than a stand-up routine would be, as written by fifties Chaplin. He’s no Lenny Bruce, whatever else he is.

So the face snaps back, and we, and our writer-director-star’s epidermis, can relax again.

The episode is queasy and sort-of humorous and does at least suggest that Chaplin is aware that skirt-chasing at his age is sort of undignified, that the middle-aged roue is prone to making an ass of himself.

TO BE CONTINUED